


Shakarian Buffet

by MizDirected



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Cussing, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Gen, Multi, Other, Romance, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:43:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizDirected/pseuds/MizDirected
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A place to collect all the drabbles that I write based on prompts in the Mass Effect Fanfiction Writers Group on Facebook challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Meaning of Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus and Shepard face off over one too many "Can it wait for a minute, I'm in the middle of some calibrations."

He heard her coming before she even reached the galley, her stride unmistakable.  The crew seated at the table called out to her, the smoky music of her replies set the elcor gymnast in his gut tumbling.  He took long breaths when that determined march mounted the stairs between the sleeper pods instead of heading into Lawson’s office or the medbay.  Damn, why couldn’t she just leave him be?  Every day, the same thing: the heat of her stare on the back of his cowl, the question, the choking grip of her disappointment.

 

The door opened, but he didn’t turn, keeping his talons busy on the console.  Thank the sweet spirits for muscle memory, because he could have been sending the thanix cannon into overload for all the attention he paid to what he was doing.

 

“Hey, Garrus,” she said.  Same as every other day except for the seven percent increase in sadness that weighed down the words.  “Got a minute?”

 

He kept his hands moving over the console, his spine braced, a bulwark set to guard his weakest flank.  “Can it wait?  I’m in the middle of some calibrations.”

 

“That’s it.”  Hands slammed into the back of his armour, startling him.  He half-spun, looking back over his shoulder, coming elbow to nose with a woman he’d never expected to have to face down: Commander Shepard.  “I’ve listened to that bullshit for the last time.”  She slammed into him again, shoving him into his console.  Despite the fact that he stood thirty or so centimetres taller than her, in that moment, she towered over him, rage and hurt lending her a praela’s stature.  An impossibly tight grip snatched at his arm, digging the edge of his gauntlet into his flesh as she spun him the rest of the way around.

 

“Shepard, I … .”

 

Palms out, she slammed him back into the console.  “Shut up.  You tell me about calibrations one more time, I’ll finish what that bloody rocket started.”  Fury spun her on her heel, sending her storming to the door.  His heartbeat thumped hard and quick where the arteries slipped over his keel and beneath the bandage that held his face together.  He’d seen Shepard a lot of different sorts of angry, but as she shut the door and locked it, what he saw was something altogether new.  And a little terrifying.

 

“I thought,” she said, her voice suddenly so soft that he had to strain to hear it, “that we’d had a breakthrough after you stood down and spared Sidonis.”  Instead of turning to face him, she buttressed a hand against the door.  “I thought maybe we had a shot of getting somewhere real, Garrus … that you’d let me inside the walls.”  Her shoulders slumped, all the fire of the moment before going out.

 

“Shepard … .”

 

She spun, and he saw that he’d been wrong; she hadn’t extinguished the fire, just banked the coals.  Emerald eyes locked on his, wiping out the rest of what he intended to say.  Damn, just look at her.  His heart hammered against the inside of his keel, the sick flip in his gut tying itself into a knot.  How in the name of buratrum was a torin supposed to defend himself against her?

 

“I’m doing the talking, Vakarian.  Just keep your mouth closed until I say you can speak.  A month of calibrations should buy me a fuckton of leeway.”  She paced over to his workbench, nimble, restless fingers organizing the tools, rifle parts, and mods scattered over its surface.  Shepard had never met anything she couldn’t obsessively organize, to the extent of making sure her utensils lined up, perfectly parallel to one another and perpendicular to her meal tray.  How many hours had he spent watching her sort, line up, and adjust?  

 

“I’m alone here,” she said, at last, a note of defeat souring her tone.  A cough of sound—a laugh?—tore from her throat, slamming off the bulkheads, so harsh and sharp that he jumped.  “Really damn alone for the first time in my life.”  Turning ninety degrees, she sank onto the crate he used as a seat.  One arm perched along the edge of the work surface, her fingernail scraping at a stray bit of resin, while the other hung between her thighs.  “Before she died, Mama told me that Jesus and His Father would take care of me, and I believed it.  Then I had the Reds, such as they were.”

 

Garrus shifted his weight, his left foot sliding a half step toward her before he caught himself, the vacuum left behind by her anger dragging him in.  His hands ached to fill themselves with her; to grip her shoulders or wrap around her fingers and still their endless fussing.  It was a dangerous longing, one that could rip him limb for limb if he allowed it to take hold.  

 

“In the Alliance, I had friends, but the Reapers stole all that from me.”  She kicked her heel against the crate.  “Now, I’m just a madwoman with an obsession … a joke to them all.”  For a moment, her mouth remained open ever so slightly, as if mid-inhale, ready to speak, but then she closed it.  

 

His hand lifted, reaching toward her a little, but he managed to get it under control and drop it back to his side before she noticed.  Coddling her would not result in thanks.  No, a fist to the gut was more likely.

 

“Then I died and there was nothing.  Absolutely nothing.”  She looked up at him, her eyes narrow and filled with an emptiness that pulled him over to stand in front of her.  “What does that mean, Garrus?  What does it mean if we can be turned on and off like lights?”  Shaking her head, she stood, hesitating a moment when they stood chest to chest.  Pivoting away, she paced to the other side of the battery, then partway back.  “Just machines, I guess.”

 

“Shepard, you’re not alone.”  He sucked in a long breath, wincing as it whistled through his nose.  She’d always teased him about it.  For a moment, the dim light transported him back to the cargo bay of the first Normandy.  The two of them lying under the Mako, repairing whatever she’d smashed that day, laughing and telling ridiculous stories from their pasts.  

 

When she met his eyes, hers startled him.  He’d seen Shepard upset before in as many ways as he’d seen her angry, but he’d never seen her cry.  He wasn’t even sure she could.  But right then, glassy and red, her gaze threatened to break, and spirits help him, he didn’t know how he’d react if tears fell.

 

“When I walked into that room on Omega,” she said, speaking each word as if they would shatter if she didn’t handle them carefully, “I’d never been so glad to see anyone in my life.”  She looked away, turning to replace him at his console.  “Tali walked away from me on Freedom’s Progress, but I found you right after.  Then, of course, Ash told me to go to hell on Horizon, but it was okay because you were here.”  She leaned into the console, shoulders pulled up to her ears, a fingernail scraping at some bit of detritus that only she could see.  “Is this all we’re going to be, Garrus?  A back facing me while you make some bullshit excuse about calibrations?”

 

He released a breath that sliced through the air.  Shepard winced as it impacted.  “I have your back, Shepard.  You know that.”

 

She nodded and pushed away from the console.  “Very well.  If that’s the way you want it, I’ll leave you be, but don’t you dare tell me that I’m not alone, Vakarian.”  Those impossibly green eyes met his again, a fleeting second that betrayed the tracks shining on her cheeks.  “Don’t you dare.”  Spinning on her heel, she headed for the door.

 

Before she could hit the control, he lunged toward her.  “You left me, Shepard.”

 

She froze, solid and immovable as marble, her hand pressed to the lock.  “I died, Garrus.”

 

“Exactly.  You dumped me off on the Citadel, said ‘good luck becoming a Spectre’ and then went and threw yourself into the first death defying situation you could.”  He pressed in on her, fury flowing like magma through his bones.  “You’re a walking death wish, Shepard.”

 

She turned toward him far enough that he could see the scarred, glowing expanse of her cheek, the tip of her nose … her eyelashes.  “And you aren’t?”

 

“I learned from the best.”  He spun, unable to look at that cheek any longer, his talons aching to reach up and touch it, and stormed across the battery, stepping down into the aisle next to the massive weapon.

 

“Why did you really go to Omega, Garrus?  Was C-Sec and becoming a Spectre just too much of a hassle, or was it something else?”  She followed him three steps, he counted them as her boots thumped against the deck plating.  

 

He chuffed, harsh, subvocals rolling with rage and hurt.  “I was on my daily trip to your memorial when I saw Conrad Verner haul off and slug Udina.  Apparently your biggest fan didn’t appreciate what the councillor had to say about you.  I grabbed him and stuck him on the first ship to Illium, because I knew Udina would show no mercy.”  Plucking a tool off the wall, he turned it over in his talons.  “My actions were captured on security feeds, and I was given a choice: resign or be fired.  The only thing I gave a shit about died over Alchera, so I figured, why not?  At least on Omega, I could do some good before taking the inevitable bullet.”

 

“So you were basically just committing suicide?”  Four more steps, and he could feel her standing just behind him, her presence prickling along his hide like nettles.  “Fuck the coming war, I won’t bother to become anything more or try to pick up where Shepard left off?  I’ll just go to Omega and die?”  Disdain dripped from the words, venom that poisoned the air.

 

“What war?”  Fury grabbed him by the cowl and spun him around to loom over her, rolling thunder and lightning ready to strike.  “You were the resistance, Shepard.  Without you, everyone else just folded.”  He threw the tool aside and stepped into her, forcing her back a step.  “You were the most important piece on that board, and you threw yourself away to save one person.  As much as I like Joker, he couldn’t save us from an over-friendly varren.  We needed you!”

 

Shepard’s face flipped through at least six expressions before her features turned to stone, hard and implacable.  “Would I have been the person to end the damned war if I could leave Joker to die?”  She shook her head and turned.  “Forget it.  You want to be pissed at me for dying, be pissed at me, but—”

 

“Sweet spirits, Shepard, just shut up!”  The bellow startled him more than it appeared to startle Shepard.  “I’ve been in love with you since those nights spent under the damned Mako, and it terrifies me.”  He shook his head, regretting the insubordination and the possibility that others might have heard it.  “I won’t survive losing you again.  I need this damned distance.  Do you know what it’s like to be in love with someone who throws themself in front of every bullet, taking on every damned suicidal risk?”

 

The stone thawed like spring ice, the eyes that met his suddenly sparking, alive, and warm.  Damn, not warm … loving.  He sighed, all his carefully erected walls crumbling.

 

Slowly, ever so slowly, Shepard nodded.  “Yeah, apparently, I do.”


	2. Well, That Could Have Gone Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus damages his brand new armour. Silly turian.

“Well, that could have gone better.”  

 

“Shut up, Vakarian.”  Shepard grabbed his arm, wrenching it toward her, fury providing her only defense as she slapped his medigel.  “I’ve got sufficient proof of your idiocy bleeding all over me.”  She dropped his arm across his thigh, trying to ignore the garotte tightening around her throat.  Sweet fucking Christ … so much damned blood.  Choking on panic, she stabbed him with a furious glare.  “I just bought you this damned armour, and now it’s got a huge fucking hole in it.”

 

Rough fingers dug through the packs on his belt as he chuckled, the sound choked and wet.  Too damned wet.  The fist tightened as a myriad of useless paraphernalia piled up on fifty thousand years of crusted filth.  “Damn it, clean out your belt pouches once in awhile.”  Frustration prompted a litany of curses before she finally found bandages and slapped them against the wound, pressing for all she was worth.

 

“Joker, where the hell is our shuttle?” she bellowed into the comms.  

 

“On it’s way, Commander,” the pilot replied.  “ETA less than a minute to Thane’s position.”

 

“Three bloody minutes, Vakarian,” she said, her voice a low growl.  Fear made her a bitch.  She knew she’d regret her harshness later, but allowed it to bite nonetheless.  If Garrus didn’t know her by then … .  “We would have been clear of this damned ship in three bloody minutes.”  She looked up into his eyes, her heart stopping at the fog clouding over his gaze.  One hand slapped his cheek, trying to clear it away.  “Hey!  Don’t you dare quit on me.  You die, I swear to God that I’ll find a way to make your death a living hell.”

 

He chuckled again, the sound slow and slurred.  “That makes no sense.”  For a second, the fog drew back, and he lifted a hand, long talons skating along her cheek.

 

Shepard jerked away from the sudden intimacy, covering her startlement with a rough laugh.  “You getting fresh with me, Vakarian?  Damn, you must be losing more blood than I thought.”  She hit his medigel again and increased pressure on the bloody mass of torn armour and flesh in his side.

 

“No time like the present,” he said, eyes drifting closed.  “That’s the saying, right?”  A long sigh whistled through his nostrils.  He slumped, the immovable solidity melting into the encrusted metal.  “You yelled at me in Chloe Michel’s clinic, remember?  Dressed me down for risking a civilian.”

 

“Shuttle has arrived, Shepard,” Thane’s deep voice spoke in her ear.  “On my way to you now.”

 

“Will the shuttle make it all the way through?” she demanded, hating the terror strangling her words.  The damned turian had better not leave her alone amongst the enemy.  She would bloody well find a way to haunt his death if he did.  

 

“Yes, the corridors are of sufficient size for passage.”

 

She bit down on the sigh of relief that tried to escape, her teeth catching the edge of her tongue.  Pain bloomed, a welcome anchor.  All right, just a few more minutes and then Chakwas would patch him up just fine.

 

“Yeah, I remember,” she said, addressing Garrus’s memory.  “You were an idiot back then, too.”

 

He nodded.  “Somethings never change, I guess.”  He shifted, lifting himself a centimetre further up the wall.  A grunt of pain accompanied the movement, the sound slicing straight through her.  “I think that’s when it happened.”

 

She lifted her hand to look at the bandage.  Soaked through.  Shoving her clenched gut aside, she swallowed the frantic sob that tried to escape and packed another bandage over the soaked one.  “When what happened?” she asked, turning toward the sound of the shuttle’s engines, loud in the confined space as they announced its approach.  Thank the lord.

 

Strong talons wrapped around her slippery, blood-soaked gloves.  “That’s when I fell in love with you.”

 

The words bounced off of her for a moment before she realized what he’d said and looked up, mouth hanging open, eyes too large for her face.  “I think you’re letting the blood loss do the talking there big guy.”  His eyes remained closed.  Extricating one hand from his grip, she pressed it against his mandible.  “Hey, Vakarian, eyes on me, soldier.”  When his eyelids flickered open, a hard, rictus of a smile pulled back one side of her mouth.  “Live through this, and I’ll let you take me to dinner.  If you still want to talk about this, we’ll do it then, okay?”

 

His mandibles fluttered under her hand, his smile pale and exhausted.  “Huh, maybe this couldn’t have gone better after all.”

 

 


	3. A Mallupean in Two and a Half Parts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Please, don't do this. I haven't had a chance to tell you anything. I haven't yelled at you for bringing the Mako back in pieces every single mission, or hiking us across planets so far below the freezing mark, liquid elements are considered mythology." Straightening, he reaches out with his talons, a supplication that he manages to wrestle under control before actually making contact.
> 
> Based on the Prompt, "Please, don't do this."

**Mallupean** \- A turian song composed to honour the deceased. It is usually written and sung (keened) by their closest loved one as an act of devotion to both the individual and the relationship. It is made up of three parts in a vaguely sonata-esque form.

**Expositux (The first movement)**

The stone feels remarkably warm, almost comforting beneath his brow. It's surprising, that warmth, although maybe it shouldn't be on such a beautiful day. Not that he's compiled a great deal of experience with such things, but superstition says it should be cold.

"Don't do this." His words push through the brisk, lakeside breeze, subvocals rolling with all the things he can't say out loud. "Please, don't do this. I haven't had a chance to tell you anything. I haven't yelled at you for bringing the Mako back in pieces every single mission, or hiking us across planets so far below the freezing mark, liquid elements are considered mythology." Straightening, he reaches out with his talons, a supplication that he manages to wrestle under control before actually making contact.

He chuffs and shakes his head, memories choking him in their beautiful but caustic smoke. Her stare never waivers. "Don't get me started on dragging me through that pyjak-shit-filled mine. There isn't enough therapy or post-hypnotic suggestion to get me past the stench or having to give a hundred of those little bastards rectal exams." A chuckle rattles like broken glass in his throat, a soft keen clinging to its underside. "Spirits, that really was the most miserable day of my life, and you just laughed and asked what I thought they'd done with the data module that required such a thorough exam."

Stepping back, he rakes his talons over his fringe, his eyes refusing to leave her face … the brilliant green of her eyes, the mischievous smile always tugging at one eyebrow and one corner of her mouth. "I haven't taught you how to drive the damned Mako so that Chakwas doesn't have to meet us in the cargo bay with stretchers and administer a week of chiropractic treatment before we walk straight again." His low moan escapes without the accompanying laugh that time, and he glances behind him, to make sure no one can hear him beg.

"Please." His voice shatters into a long, low plaint that burns; spirits, it burns magma-hot behind his eyes and down his throat. Liquid metal and rock pool in his gut, the level rising until they bleed from his eyes. "Please. This isn't funny. It's not one of your stupid practical jokes that you can just smooth over with that damned laugh and a slap on the back."

Another chuff, this one exploding from his chest with a force bordering on fury. "Listen to me. I'm begging, and you know, before you, I might have been too proud. Now … if it changes anything, I'll beg, just don't leave me behind." His hand starts to rise again, but he fights it down. "I know. I know I said I'd go back and do things right, that I'd apply to become a Spectre—"

"Garrus?"

A soft, embarrassed chuff escapes as Garrus jumps and spins around to find Alenko watching him from a few metres away. Turning his back to the lieutenant, he swallows a half dozen times and takes a few deep breaths before he manages to get a, "Yeah?" out without his voice breaking. The air stings his nose with a mixture of colognes. Funny he didn't notice it earlier with everyone crowded around him.

"You okay?" Kaidan's steps rustle through the grass as he approaches. The sound is oddly calming … normal. "We'll be heading back to the  _Leningrad_  in ten minutes."

"Fine," he says, grunting the word past the talons lodged in his throat, making it sound as if it doesn't matter. Everything's just perfect. "I'll be there."

He waits, his attention focused behind him, willing the Marine to walk away. Instead, the silence stretches out thin and uncomfortable, a garotte of expectation.

"None of us are, you know? Okay, I mean." The lieutenant's voice holds far too much understanding and empathy for comfort. Kaidan needs to move along, and leave him to deal with this … breaking … shattering of purpose and passion … and heart. "It feels like the family is … ." He grinds to a stop and Garrus can almost hear the man's shrug. Clearing his throat, Kaidan continues, never having sounded more awkward or as if he had more to say. "Anyway, we're underway in ten."

Garrus merely nods, waiting for all their footsteps to fade before he reaches out and lays a hand on the memorial. Bending down, he touches his brow to the stone once more. "Please, don't be dead." His keen echoes off the trees of the park where she played as a child, sharp as knives, cleaving him to the bone when they bounce back.

"I never got the chance to tell you … " His voice breaks, only his subvocals finishing the sentence. "... that I love you."

**Pragrusan (The Second Movement)**

"How do I look?" Shepard steps out of her bathroom and, holding out her arms, spins slowly as if she's modeling the finest fashion instead of her dress blues. "Properly chastised and contrite?" Her eyes sparkle with teasing as she looks up at him, but the tight bulge at her jaw and the way she swallows—as if she's trying to get down a billiard ball—betray her fear.

Garrus opens his mouth to toss a careless quip back, but the varren dangling from the back of his tongue eats them all before he can speak. He settles for clearing his throat and nodding. "You look ready," he says, proud that he manages to get that much out.

He hates that she looks ready, that she has since the  _Normandy_  pulled her off that damned asteroid. He hates the guilt and sorrow that haunts her eyes and draws tears down her cheeks when she thinks he's not looking. She doesn't deserve it. He needs no tribunal to tell him that she did the best she could to warn the batarians. The deed needed to be done, and yet she torments herself with the weight of all those dead.

Her smile lights up the room, and slips a slow stiletto between his plates, stabbing his heart with her absence even before she's gone. Her fingertips breeze along his mandible, and for that moment, he wishes they'd made love every moment from the day he stepped on board. Disrupt the crew as little as possible? What in the pits of buratrum had he been thinking? He's the biggest idiot in existence.

"Come on, better not keep them waiting." Standing on her toes, she brushes a kiss against his mouth, then glides past him to the door.

"What are they going to do," he says, his anger sneaking in, smoke under a door, "lock you up if you take an extra couple of minutes to say goodbye to your boyfriend?"

She freezes, and he realizes what he said, heat billowing up the back of his neck. Oh damn, he's said it too soon. Too damned soon. But when she turns, her eyes sparkle with tears, but not the sort that tell him that she's strapped herself to the whipping post, and she smiles. "Boyfriend, huh?"

He braces himself for teasing, but she simply returns to wrap her arms around his waist. "I have to turn myself in, Garrus."

Her hair is silk against his mouth, her scent spring mornings and dew as he returns her embrace, lowering his head to nuzzle hers. "You didn't do anything wrong. You don't have to throw yourself on their sword." It won't work, it hasn't any of the times he's said it over the past weeks.

She just nods instead of repeating her 'buying time to prepare; the Alliance can't afford war now' argument. After a couple more stolen moments, she pulls away. "It's time."

Garrus leads the way to the door that time, but stops before he opens it and turns back, one hand reaching out to caress her cheek. "We just got started." He opens his mouth, more words, begging words, to hell with pride, teetering on the tip of his tongue. But then she steps past him and opens the door herself.

He follows her in silence as she says her goodbyes, the stalwart shadow at her back. He's supported her from the first, he certainly won't turn his back on her now.

She slips her hand into his. He holds tight to still its trembling. No, he certainly will never turn his back.

He watches them lead her away, the words still unspoken, lodged somewhere between his keel and his heart as she glances back over her shoulder and smiles. He closes his eyes, the words so old and threadbare now that if he spoke them, they'd tear. "Please, don't do this. To hell with duty. Stay with me." He hears the doors close behind her and turns away.

**Conlectix (The Third Movement)**

Fury stalks his every move for the first month. It's righteous and warm, keeping the cold nights at bay. She made promises and then she broke them. She left him to go on alone … again.

He's in the middle of replacing secondary power couplings when the rage vanishes. It just evaporates, mist after sunrise, leaving a vacuum so acute, he staggers into a wall, hand clutching his keel. Gabby and Ken call Chakwas, they think he's having a heart attack. They're a week into their return trip to Earth.

He misses the rage. Misses it more than he misses the scent on her pillow. Anger kept him moving, kept the fog from his eyes and the purpose in his step. It kept him focused on getting them all home. Living to scream at her for sending him away kept him alive.

They start taking turns to check on him. He knows that none of them can bear the dread of what they might see when they enter the battery, not day after day. They don't understand that as empty as he is, that way out is not an option. He needs to know for sure. He gave up the last time she died, and he tries not to make the same mistakes twice.

They are halfway home when the vacuum—shock, the doctor calls it—wears off and sorrow pours in, a deluge without end or ease. Why did he bother to save a galaxy that simply continues to rotate without her? A body without a heart … without a soul … is what? It's an empty, haunted domin.

They stop coming to check on him. The silence is a sigh of relief. He fades into the bulkheads and deck plating, nothing more than a shadow and a whisper. The  _Normandy's_  very own ghost.

A month remains in their voyage when Hackett's face appears on their QEC pad once more. The Reapers are destroyed, the galaxy saved, but at a cost, one they'd already guessed when EDI died.

"We found Shepard on the Citadel." The admiral's lips form the first words he's heard since 'You know that I love you, and I always will.'

"She's very critically injured. The doctors don't know if she'll live." Hackett's sympathetic smile says that he understands, and perhaps he does, perhaps not. Can anyone truly? "We'll keep you informed."

He takes to pacing the decks night and day. Liara fusses, Chakwas threatens, Tali cajoles, all shoving food and bottles of water in his face, and insisting that he sleeps. He does sleep, now and again. Mostly he lies in the dark, making bargains with deities he doesn't even hold faith with. It's madness. No one feels that more acutely than he does, but he cannot stop the litany, the begging:

"Please, don't do this. Don't take her."

By way of greeting him, Earth's skies pour rain, but he has no time for it. He has no time for the hero's welcome, for the hands reaching to shake his, nor for the speeches. It's all bluster and dressing that doesn't matter in the least.

It seems, in fact, that Hackett does understand and orders a path cut through the throng. "I'll take you to her."

Silence reigns in that all-white place as he pushes through the door, stuttering to a halt just inside. Machines gleam here and there, their monitors the only colour in the room other than the riot of freckles and the brilliant beacon of her hair.

"Please, don't do this." His whisper echoes, so loud it feels unseemly. "Please, Shepard. This one time, listen to me, and don't leave."

"Garrus?" The whisper brushes his aural canals, a kiss to wake a dreamer, and he truly hears his name for the first time in months.

The shade recedes, smoke forming into flesh and bone; his heart beats, strong and fast; blood burns through unused veins like cleansing fire. He smiles, it feels clumsy and strange on his face until mourning's mask falls away. Deep breaths gust through the bellows of his lungs, joy and fire and life flaring bright for a moment before settling.

He crosses the floor to her side, and she opens her eyes. The green is the most beautiful colour he's ever seen. How could his mind's eye have let that colour fade even a shade?

"I made you a promise," she says, her words halting and as dry as the crunch of desert rocks underfoot. "As long as you don't mind a bond-mate with a couple more artificial parts and pieces." She lifts her hand, flexing the robotic fingers as if trying to reconcile them with the body she remembers from back at the beginning, ankle deep in pyjak shit.

Taking those fingers in his, he presses them to his mouth and closes his eyes. "Thank you," is all he says before he leans up and kisses her. She doesn't need to know how many times he's begged her not to leave him. All that matters is that this time, she didn't.

* * *

 **Mallupean** \- A turian song composed to honour the deceased. It is usually written and sung (keened) by their closest loved one as an act of devotion to both the individual and the relationship. It is made up of three parts in a vaguely sonata-esque form. 1) Expositux: The movement of sorrow, an expression of raw grief that speaks to the hole the deceased will leave behind. It can include regrets, things the composer wishes they had done or said, even blame accepting or placing it. The point is to expunge all that emotional effluvia. 2) Pragrusan: The movement of celebration, extolling all the joy and peace the deceased brought into the world. 3) Conlectix: The movement of release, through releasing the deceased, the singer frees him or herself from remaining bound to grief and loss. It gives permission for joy and life to start returning amidst the sorrow.


	4. How Many Prayers?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A war-wearied and torn Shepard is awakened by something outside her window.

Thumping against the side of the building woke Shepard out of a dead sleep.  For a moment, frantic fingers fumbled for her sidearm, searching under her pillow but coming up empty.  Damn nurses had taken it as soon as she fell asleep.  Again.  Steve would smuggle one in for her in the morning—again—but that didn’t help her there and then.  She listened, waiting for the banging to return, but the night outside her gilded cage had returned to silence.

 

After nearly a year of assassins, botched kidnappings, and crazed fans one would think they’d realize she needed to have a gun at the ready.  The nurses just pointed to the walls pocked with bullet holes as their justification for leaving her next to helpless.  They needn’t have worried; the nightmares about being torn apart by Reapers had ended three months before.  Now she just woke bathed in sweat, screaming until the weight of the dead turian clutched against her faded, leaving her whispering prayers and pleas into the dark.

 

_ Dear God, please let Garrus have lived.  Please let me feel his arms around me again.  Please help me find a way out of this hell that Hackett calls protective custody. _

 

Please … please … please … .  How many god-damned, tear-soaked prayers did it take to get someone’s most desperate wishes fulfilled?  Shepard flopped back against her pillows.  At least one more, apparently.

 

Something scuffled against the outside wall.  Footsteps?  Someone was rappelling down to her window!  

 

Heart hammering in her chest, she threw back the covers and lifted her legs off the mattress, lowering the complex mechanisms to hang off the side of the bed.  She reached for her crutches, sliding her arms into the cuffs.  As she wrapped her fingers around the grips, she wished she were more competent with her new body parts.

 

More banging was followed by a heavy thump and a curse.  “Why aren’t we using a shuttle?” a male voice grumbled low and throaty.  Turian?  Maybe batarian, the thin whisper made it hard to tell.  

 

Shepard took a shaky breath and glanced toward the door.  Too far.  It would take her at least three minutes to cross the four metres of floor.

 

“So much for covert.”  The reply definitely sounded human despite being muffled and breathy with exertion.  “Shut up before you put the entire hospital on alert.”

 

Balancing herself between the crutches and her legs, Shepard stood.  One step at a time, she teetered her way over to the window and looked out, unable to see anything in the absolute black on the other side of the foggy plastic.  

 

“Okay,” a hoarse whisper said from less than an arm’s length away.  “Hold up.  I’m there.”

 

Shepard backed off to one side and braced herself against the wall as she brandished a crutch like a baseball bat, ready to swing.  

 

Something pressed against the plastic, then the thick polymer parted with a pop and then a zipping sound.  Sucking in a deep breath, Shepard struggled to calm her frantic heart.  She didn’t stand a chance.  There were at least two of them, and she could barely stand let alone fight, but maybe if she hit the one at the window hard enough, she could buy herself enough time to make it to the door.

 

She could scream, but the thought of Comm … Captain Jane Shepard screaming for help rankled.  

 

The plastic parted, a helmeted head peering through.  Definitely turian.  It looked side to side, then disappeared, replaced by a long leg.

 

“Is she there?” another voice whispered from above.

 

“I don’t see her, but it’s so dark even the night vision is bad.”  As the tall, lean body eased halfway through, Shepard stepped forward and swung for all she was worth, cracking the intruder across the face plate of his helmet.  

 

Overbalanced by the force of her swing, Shepard toppled into a heap of artificial limbs and aching flesh on the chill floor.  Her would-be assailant let out a pained curse as he tumbled backwards out the window.  The angry hornet buzz of rope sliding over metal and a chorus of curses from above accompanied his fall.  

 

“Shit!  Scars, you okay?” 

 

Scars?  Shepard dragged one arm under her and heaved herself up onto a hip, hope striking a flint in her chest.  Scars?  The hospital room faded, replaced by the weight of her love’s body in her arms, the terrible smell of burning flesh … the weak rattle of his breath … the spatter of blood that accompanied each wracking cough … .

 

“Yeah, I’m okay.  Reel me back up.”  The voice pushed back her nightmare, allowing hope to reassert itself.

 

“What happened?”  

 

She knew that voice.  Hope smacked her in the back of the head, sending her reeling.  Could it be?  Had she finally whispered her last prayer into the darkness?  “Kaidan?” she whispered.

 

The sound of struggle on the other side of the window drew her attention back out into the black.  “Shepard cracked me across the face with a pipe or something, broke my face shield.”  Scuffling and banging moved up the side of the hospital, then the head appeared in the window again.  “Shepard, it’s okay.  Please, don’t hit me.”

 

That voice!  A sharp sob of relief and shock hiccuped between trembling lips as she watched the turian clamber back through the window.  “Garrus?”  His name rang in the silent air like a blessing.

 

“Yeah, it’s me.”  As soon as both feet hit the floor, he hurried to crouch at her side.  “You okay?  You didn’t hurt yourself smashing me in the face, did you?”  He unclasped the seal on his helmet and tugged it off.

 

Shaking hands reached up to clasp Garrus’s face between them, wincing at the dark paths of blood trickling over his plates.  “This is real, right?  I’m not just dreaming it?” she asked, fear damping the hope until he nodded.

 

“It’s a break out,” he said, turning his head to nuzzle her palm.  “You made me a promise that we’d retire and start a family.”  A wide smile followed.  “I’m here to collect.”  He clasped her hands, moving them to his cowl, then slid his arms under her.  “We’re going out the window and down.  Steve stole us a getaway car: a C-Sec shuttle.”  He stood, lifting her as if she weighed next to nothing.  “You ready?”

 

Shepard nodded, so very ready.  “Steve stole a car?”

 

Garrus nodded, his mandibles spreading and flicking hard.  “He helped set this all up.  James and Kaidan will follow once they lower us down.”

 

“Does Hackett know the  _ Normandy _ is back?” she asked, struggling to piece it all together.

 

“No one does.  We came in with the IES active, and we’ll leave the same way.”  He leaned in and nuzzled her lips.  “We’ll be like that ancient king—Arthur—you told me about and just disappear into the mist … let history decide what became of us.”  His grip on her tightened for a long moment as he nuzzled her lips again.  “Spirits, I’ve missed you.”

 

Shepard just nodded and wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him tight as paralysis gripped her vocal chords.  Turning her face into the hollow of his throat, she just breathed him in.  Five minutes ago, she hadn’t even known if he was dead or alive, and now … .  “So, you’ve come to abduct me out a tenth storey window and then whisk me away in a stolen C-Sec vehicle to the  _ Normandy _ … that no one knows survived the Crucible?”  Shepard grinned as she shook her head, tightening her grip on him.

 

He waggled his head a little, then nodded.  “Yeah, that about covers it.  No getting dragged back into the military, no good will or PR tours, just the crew finding some peace on a nice little tropical planet we discovered.”

 

Shepard pressed a hard, passionate kiss against his mouth, then nodded toward the window.  “You realize that this plan is completely insane?”

 

“Completely.”  He nuzzled her lips then carried her to the window.

 

Shepard let out a sharp breath of relief.  No plan had ever sounded quite so mad or quite so much like an answer to all her prayers.  “Well, okay then, I’m in!”


	5. Sorores meas fortiter moriendo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victory always comes with a price. Jane Gwendolyn Shepard faces one of the moments where war collects its due.
> 
> Written for the Short Fiction Weekly Challenge prompt: Brotherhood/Sisterhood.
> 
> Title translated: My brave sister's death

“How’s Izzy doing, Nihlus?”  Rubble slid and rolled out from under Shepard’s feet as she picked her way toward the light at the end of the long corridor.  “I can’t hear her crying.”

 

“She’s okay, Jane,” the Spectre replied.  “She’s just tired.  Don’t worry.”

 

Shepard stumbled, the jolt sending sharp, electric spears of pain searing through her limbs.  For a moment, she struggled to maintain her grip on her precious burden, but then strong hands grabbed hold of her, steadying her.

 

“I can carry Bunny, Kahri,” Garrus whispered, his cheek pressed to her ear.  His mandibles flailed a little, betraying his distress.  Her beloved mate’s pain pulled a thin spool of barbed wire up Shepard’s throat.  

 

“No, she’s my sister, Garrus.  She carried Izzy … .”  A gulping swallow cut off the words before they morphed into sobs.  “I owe her this.”  She turned into him for a moment, drawing strength from his scent, spice mixed with dust, smoke, and sweat … the scent of a torin who’d spent the better part of a day digging to rescue their family from beneath the remains of Sanctuary’s reception building.  Pulling away, Shepard squared her shoulders, settled her burden a little more easily in her arms, and continued.  

 

“It was my call to maintain the ambush, leaving Sanctuary under-defended,” she said, her voice soft, but echoing in the close quarters.  “She’s the price I paid for all those dead Reapers, and the the men and women I asked to pay the same price will see me carry her out of here.”

 

Claws dug into the base of her skull, barbs of pain spiraling through her to lodge in her heart.  She’d come so close to paying with Izzy’s life as well.  A wave of dizziness sent her stumbling into the wall.

  
Pushing herself upright, Shepard shuddered and focused on the silhouette walking just ahead of her, black against the bright, yellow-white light.  Nihlus moved carefully, loving arms cradling their tiny miracle against his body.  Shepard looked down at the closed eyes and filthy face resting against her chest.  So few moments before, she’d raced down that same corridor, stiletto sharp panic shoving people out of her way.  

 

_“We haven’t found Izzy yet, Kahri,” Garrus reported, his voice exhausted and flat, “but we think we found Bunny.  She’s buried under a slab of the ceiling.”  A soft keen rolled beneath his words._

 

_The crack through Shepard’s heart widened at the news they still hadn’t found her baby, panic chasing her mate’s words like a pack of hellhounds.  Most of the missing had been rescued.  That Bunny had Izzy hidden away somewhere safe had been the last handhold at the precipice of a long fall into a pain too horrible to even imagine.  “Is Bunny … ?”  Shepard asked, her hands digging into the blanket she’d just spread over the injured child she carried out moments before._

 

_The soulful grief beneath his sigh betrayed her sister’s fate before he said, “I’m sorry, love.  She’s gone.”_

 

_“But Izzy … .”  Her daughter’s last hope slicing into her—a million flechettes tearing her apart from the inside out—Shepard raced from the triage site, pushing her way down the tunnel dug through the debris.  She slid to a stop when she spotted the curved and dusty plane of an Archangel uniform amidst the chunks of polycrete.  A long, red braid snaked across the floor.  Bunny._

 

No.  No no no.   _Shepard’s heart stopped dead in her chest._ Izzy. _A prayer died half-formed, turning to ash in her chest.  Despite their differences, Shepard knew that Bunny loved her niece.  She knew her sister would have given her life to protect Izzy.  She just knew._

 

_When they lifted the huge chunk of ceiling off Shepard’s sister, her body was curled tight around and over something, only a small scrap of yellow visible through the thick layer of detritus.  Hope grabbed Shepard, turning its rough claws against the hands that struggled to hold her back as she ran to her sister’s side.  Throwing herself down into the rubble, Shepard dug, tearing through her gloves and skin in her haste to reveal more of that fragile, yellow fragment of faith … a breathless, airless faith she’d clung to for more than a day._

 

_Bunny would have done anything to protect Izzy. She would have.  She would.  She had to have._

 

_Garrus hit the floor at Shepard’s side, gentle talons pulling Bunny’s arm back far enough to roll her body to one side._

 

_Hands shaking so hard that she could barely grip the blanket, Shepard eased the tiny bundle from her sister’s protective grip.  Once free, the blanket let out a soft whimper and then, as it began to move, a sharp wail: the most beautiful sound Shepard could ever remember hearing._

 

Shepard tore her stare from her sister’s face, forcing aside the image of her sister’s body wrapped protectively around her baby.  A single, harsh sob escaped before she slammed the door on the volatile mixture of relief and grief and love.  There would be a time and a place to break down, but not then and not there.

 

After ten minutes of stumbling along the rubble-strewn tunnel, she emerged, blinking and blind, into the harsh light of Horizon’s hot afternoon sun.  Shepard paused, eyes tearing but wide, suffering through the pain as she waited for her vision to clear.  Before her a double line of onlookers had gathered, forming an honour guard.  She swallowed a hard lump of balled up grief and gratitude, wincing a little as it stuck in her throat.  

 

Garrus stepped up beside her and wrapped an arm around her.  He didn’t speak, just waiting until she was ready to continue.  

 

“She saved thousands,” Shepard said, her voice carrying through the silence even though she didn’t raise her voice.  “She pushed mercilessly, chasing the refugees into the lowest levels of the building before the attack brought it down.”  

 

Another arm wrapped around her from the other side.  Her mother’s blood and tear-streaked face pressed against Shepard’s for the space of two breaths, then drew away, her eyes focused forward.  After staring at Lucille Shepard’s determined, clenched jaw for another second, Shepard nodded and set out, the body in her arms light despite her baby sister’s greater height and weight.  

 

“While we stood fast, drawing a line against the Reaper advance, Beatrice May Shepard stood fast to protect our families,” Shepard called, her voice reedy as it squeezed out through the pinhole in her throat.  Tears burned the corners of her eyes.  “When you hold your loved ones close, don’t remember my actions, remember hers.  Always … always remember hers.”  She sniffed back a headful of tears and phlegm.  “Beatrice … Bunny … stood fast to protect our families ... Sanctuary’s guardian angel, and we all owe her so much more than we can ever repay.”

 

Emergency workers hurried over with an antigrav stretcher, moving in to help Shepard place her sister’s body on the thin mattress.  The captain lifted the young woman’s hands to rest on the still, broken chest, then straightened the strewn red locks that halo’d the lovely, freckled face, arranging them to hide the blood.  A tiny smile brushed Bunny’s lips, the expression of peace and … fulfillment on her face smashing through the dam holding back Shepard’s tears.

 

Leaning down to press a soft kiss against her sister’s brow, Shepard whispered, “Thank you, beautiful girl.  Thank you so very much.”  Words failed her, turning into a jumble of emotion too strong and too volatile to express through anything as simple as words … until a few bubbled to the surface of the rolling emotional sea.  “I love you, babygirl.  I’m so glad we found one another.”

 

Izzy let out a strong wail, drawing Shepard’s attention to where it belonged, with the living … the precious gifts that her sister had purchased with her life.


	6. The Only Words Worth Saying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sucking in a ragged, blade-edged breath, he hesitated, seeing in her eyes the end of their road ...

Garrus followed a few metres behind her, his mouth shut and jaw clenched, because he truly possessed no idea what he intended to say once he opened them. Of course, he didn't need to, Joker kept the conversation going. Quips flew at the speed of light, no doubt intended to cover up the same 'weevils wriggling up the spine' feeling that had tormented Garrus for the past two days. What in the name of _buratrum_ had any of them done to earn the sheer amount of strange, truly fucked up _tarc_ that plagued them on a daily basis.

A clone? Seriously? No, not just a clone, an evil clone. Worse … he could tell it was worse by the bow in Shepard's shoulders … a dead evil clone. Where Shepard reached out, the fury and fire of his rage would have tossed the damned clone into the void … well except perhaps to spare the poor bastard she landed on. As much as he tried to live Shepard's example, she possessed reserves of compassion that never stopped amazing him. And terrifying him.

"So, you know what you need to do after a long, hard day of fighting your evil clone?" Joker asked.

Shepard walked over to the kitchen counter and turned, leaning back against it, lines and dark shadows of exhaustion haunting her face. "A nap?"

The ghosts moving over her face grabbed hold of Garrus's gut and twisted. They remained so very far from the end of the damned war, and … .

Well, once seen, some things couldn't be unseen, and he'd grown tired of watching the woman he loved die.

"No! You party!" Joker said, his exclamation layered with mock despair, teasing, and pleading. "Come on, tell me you don't want to break out some booze, crank the tunes, and just cut loose?"

Shepard chuckled, soft and kind. "I want to break out a bag of chips and an orange soda, grab hold of my boyfriend, crawl into bed, and watch a vid until I pass out." Her eyes slipped past the pilot to meet Garrus's. A nod and flutter of mandibles agreed with her plan, although he intended to slip a shower in there somewhere.

Garrus's talons grasped Joker's shoulders, none too gentle for the long day and the constant nattering of the pilot's voice, and propelled him to the door and through. Ignoring the indignant protests, Garrus closed and locked the door without speaking a word of explanation or apology. When he turned back, he didn't see Shepard. Upstairs, maybe? The sound of water, drops pounding an uninterrupted rhythm on the ceiling, confirmed his hypothesis.

He turned toward the back bedroom, their impromptu armoury over the past two days, already stripping off his gauntlets as he walked. The pounding water grew erratic as Shepard stepped beneath it. Closing his eyes, stripping off his armour by touch, he allowed the picture of her to form in his mind. Rivulets of water ran down her back, the reflection of the lights betraying just how thin she'd become, shining off the bony projections of spine, ribs, and hips. When he entered, she'd turn to face him, a wan smile greeting him, arms reaching out to pull him in. She'd press herself along his length, feeling so very chill against his hide as she tried to draw in his heat and strength. So cold. She remained so very cold since Tuchanka, since Thane and Legion.

He stripped off his underlayer and hung it from the punching bag, then pivoted on his talons. If he spent any more time standing around imagining her in the shower, he'd miss the actual shower. Quick, light steps carried him to the stairs and up to the front bedroom. Stopping in the bathroom door, he saw her leaning with her hands braced against the wall, her head hanging limp and low.

She'd been born a preacher's daughter in a community of farmers, and thrown into the life of a soldier by the whims of fate and the cruelty of the universe. A rigid sense of honour, and the strongest protective instinct he'd ever seen, turned her into Commander Shepard, hero of Elysium, Eden Prime, the Citadel … of humanity … of an entire galaxy. But she'd been born to be something so much kinder, so much freer, and it gutted him to see just how much Commander Shepard cost her.

That and the knowledge that one day, Commander Shepard would kill her.

She turned to face him, no smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, but she held out her arms. Sucking in a ragged, blade-edged breath, he hesitated, seeing in her eyes the end of their road ... just as he'd seen it frozen onto the resigned, empty face of the clone falling away from the _Normandy's_ ramp.

He unlocked his jaw and opened his mouth, still not knowing what he intended to say, just that he needed to say something. "I've always loved you."

She smiled then, and nodded. "Yeah, me too, big guy." She beckoned him into her arms, and he obeyed, wrapping himself around her as if somehow he could shelter her from the entire universe.

And he'd try. Spirits, he'd never stop trying. That he'd fail … .

"I love you," he repeated, because, in the end, they amounted to the only words worth saying.

* * *

A-N: Anyone who reads my stuff may recognize the Garrus and Jane from Machinations. This drabble broke me a little. *sigh*


	7. I Loved and I Loved and I Lost You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus believed Shepard dead for sixteen years.

**Written to Hurts Like Hell (I loved and I loved and I lost you) -- Fleurie for a drabble challenge in the Mass Effect Fanfiction Writers SR2 group on Facebook.**

 

“Garrus?”  His name drifted from Shepard’s lips on a soft, sorrowful sigh.  Freezing, trapped in the ice-blue grief in his stare, her hand hovered between them for a half breath before she anchored it against the door frame.  She swallowed hard, strangling on a ball of emotions she couldn’t find a way to put into words.  When she’d tried to offer him sympathy back in Cipritine, he’d shouted at her to leave.

 

And he’d been justified in both his pain and his anger, she possessed not a single right to share in his grief.  She died on him sixteen years ago, a crime that came with a sentence that allowed for no possibility of parole.

 

He cleared his throat, the rumble echoing down the narrow corridor.  He looked either way, as if checking to be sure that no one would see him talking to her.  The movement, the guilt behind it, set loose a pack of varren in her belly.  

 

“I’m sorry,” they said, the words tumbling out at the same time.  

 

Garrus cleared his throat and backed up a step, retreating.  “I just came to say that I shouldn’t have yelled at you the way I did.  It’s not your fault that any of this is happening.  I just ….”  He swallowed hard enough that she heard his throat click and a soft keen escaped on its tail end.  “Every time I look at you, I get dragged back to that day staring at your name on the casualty list.  Finding you alive ... I panicked.  I can’t ... I just clawed my way out of the level of  _ buratrum  _ that I've lived in since the day you died .” 

 

Shepard nodded, understanding.  Hell, it wasn't like she didn't walk around thinking this new world some figment of a tortured imagination.  A bird with a shattered wing, her hand lifted to flutter between them before losing altitude, too broken to fly.

 

Garrus caught it before it fell back to her side.  “I loved you, Shepard.  I loved you like I’ve never loved anyone before or since, and I lost you.”  He turned his hand over, her fingers lying in his palm: an offering.  “It hurts every hour, every minute.”

 

She nodded.  “I know, and I’m sorry I said all that shit about you moving on.  I was just hurt and angry and stupid.”  She slipped her fingers from his, but just to grip them: a lifeline she’d been forced to live without for far too long.  So very warm … she’d forgotten how hot he ran, how comforting that had been after a long day of Reaper horror.  Shame burned hotter still beneath the collar of her shirt.  “I’m glad you found peace and a good life.  It’s just selfish idiocy to wish you’d spent the last sixteen years pining.  I never truly wished that for you, no matter how deep in hell I languished.”

 

A loud breath whistled through his nose, and he shifted back another half step, his eyes looking everywhere but at her.  “I did pine for you, though.”  Another step back forced her to follow when she refused to release his hand.  “I should have looked.”  Mandibles flailing a little—she remembered them doing that whenever he felt overfaced—he finally looked her in the eye.  “I should have refused to give up on you … should have believed in your will to live, no matter what anyone said.”

 

Shepard sighed and tugged on his hand.  “Come in?”  Her grip on his fingers tightened as he tried to pull them away.  “Just to talk.  I can pour us both some really terrible rye, and we can talk about everything or nothing.”  Closing the distance between them, she reached up to rest her hand on the collar of his armour.  “I loved and lost you, too. Maybe, eventually, we can figure out how to be friends again.”

 

For another second, she thought he’d flee, her heart chilling as it sank, pressing into her diaphragm: a suffocating weight.  

 

Then he nodded.  “All right.”  Stepping into her, he brushed her cheek in a soft kiss.  “That’s the protocol on reunions, right?”

 

Choking back a sob that scraped her throat like a ball of razor wire, she nodded and stepped back to let him in.  Hope sparked, so fragile and tenacious all the years they’d been parted, it clamoured against the shackles in which she bound it: a tiny, dangerous flame in iceberg riddled seas.

 

And it hurt like hell.


End file.
